Faces of Michigan

Lynn Wooten: Interdisciplinary research focuses on pregnancy and infant health

Black women are three times more likely to die during pregnancy than white women. Black babies also are less likely to survive through infancy.

Professor Lynn Wooten of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan wants to know if skilled leadership can improve outcomes for African American mothers and babies.

Wooten says many leadership models have been successfully applied within the business world but not to health care systems. Her interdisciplinary team has been examining what factors make a good health care leader and how their leadership abilities affect the organization of their providers, the motivation of their doctors and nurses and what kind of vision they have to help alleviate health care disparities.

“Despite the commitment of multiple stakeholders to close the health care disparity gap for prenatal care and birth outcomes, we have very little understanding of how leaders effectively organize to achieve these goals,” says Wooten, whose previous research on the positive organizational culture of nurse midwives sparked her interest in racial disparities in pregnancy and prenatal care.

“Our findings will provide an empirical and theoretical basis for developing leadership training and interventions for health care providers, administrators, community organizations and social service professionals working to reduce health care disparities by improving the access and quality to augmented prenatal care,” Wooten says.

Wooten, who earned a Ph.D. from U-M in 1995, is a clinical assistant professor of strategy and management and organizations at the Ross School. Her research focuses on how diversity management and cultural competencies practices contribute to the positive core of organizations and generate sustainable capabilities. She is a core faculty member of the U-M’s Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship.